Have they gone away? The IRA, that is. The status of the Provos is back under close scrutiny, courtesy of the ongoing tug-of-war over the transfer of policing and justice powers to Stormont. Yesterday the British and Irish governments asked the Independent Monitoring Commission to issue a special report on the IRA, with particular regard to the standing of the Army Council.

Like any good trial lawyer, the governments wouldn’t ask the question if they didn’t already know the answer (since the IMC relies in large part on UK and Irish intelligence agencies for its information, London and Dublin have certainly cast their eyes over the same raw material for the report).

The rest of us don’t yet know, but we can make a pretty good guess. When the IMC submits its views on September 1, they certainly won’t conclude the Provos are plotting a return to war. Since the IRA ordered its units to stand down in 2005, the tenor of the IMC’s assessment has been of a group gradual

ly winding down. Key members of the leadership, the IMC says, have been diverted into politics.

In all likelihood, the watchdog will report more of the same: a lack of any terrorist ambitions in a group that is gradually shrivelling on the sidelines.

Whatever the exact wording, the IMC report will be used by the governments to, ahem, encourage the DUP into giving its final agreement to the devolution of justice. The IRA is not a threat, says the script. These days it’s easy to conclude that the five members of the Army Council spend more time spoiling their grandchildren than they do on sedition.

That won’t be enough for the DUP. Nor is it likely to be enough for most people in Northern Ireland. Nor should it be.

The IRA leadership needs to go the way of its guns. There is an argument — echoing the republican position on decommission, as it happens — that, left to its own devices, the IRA will fade away into some sort of old comrades’ association, reminiscing over acts of devastation. Or spending their time selling T-shirts, like the one highlighted on Sinn Fein’s website yesterday, announcing “The Struggle Continues”.

This political process can’t wait for that kind of

glacial change, acknowledged only by the continuing absence of violence. The IRA needs to be definitive and decisive.

Why? Consider the transformation of policing as an example. Disposing of the RUC’s name was largely a symbolic matter — a painful one for most unionists — but one that was considered utterly necessary to win the support of nationalists and republicans. And so it proved to be.

If they don’t disband outright, a similar change for the IRA would have enormous symbolic value — offering formal recognition that things have changed, that whatever role the IRA envisaged for itself has been consigned to history.

Once, the IRA leadership was necessary to the peace process, to maintain control of their arsenal and keep some discipline in their ranks. No more. Now they need to answer the question: if your war is over, if there are no guns left to control and no gunmen to command, what are you here for? Go back to the plough. Slán abhaile.